GTIA
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and can help them figure out how they should roll out AI when they have not done the due diligence in their own company and then it doesn’t provide value.” Lack of expertise Another problem with the growth of AI is that there are not enough people in the market with the skills that are needed to exploit it and drive the technology. “We asked a question about the biggest drivers for positive movement in the channel in the year ahead, and then the biggest negatives, what’s potentially going to drag the channel down,” says Carolyn. “In the UK, workforce and skills challenges is the number one drag they identified – the only region that identified that as number one. Workforce is up there in the other regions, but it is not the number one. “Nearly four in 10 UK channel companies said that workforce and skills challenges is going to be their biggest inhibitor to success. And you can apply that to AI and to the more advanced cybersecurity needs that they have.” Carolyn adds that there are localised reasons for this. “I talked to some people, and anecdotally, there’s a lot of evidence that Brexit has screwed up the workforce situation because there’s less easy movement between Europe and the UK in terms of getting skilled workers over from other parts of Europe in some of these technology areas. “If you cannot hire anew, that becomes a real problem. It’s going to be incumbent upon a lot of UK channel firms to invest in training for their existing employees. They need to identify those employees that are most capable and will be able to upskill to the level that they need them to be at. In the coming years, a focus on internal training is going to be important for some of these companies. “This will extend to customers too who will certainly need the help, even if there’s not a macro challenge with workforce and skills. But many customers don’t have a
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In the UK, workforce and skills challenges is the number one drag they identified – the only region that identified that as number one. Workforce is up there in the other regions, but it is not the number one.
big internal IT department themselves, they’re looking outside for help. That’s an opportunity for the channel. They can help guide customers. “That’s something a lot of the channel has latched on to: rather than selling specific AI products being more of a consultant to their customers and help them figure out the best way to apply AI to their company.” Hybrid models GTIA’s research also indicated that AI will bring a shift in business model for many channel businesses, as well as different pricing models for customers. “The old margin-based pricing models based, if you’re an MSP, on per user or per device are going to change when AI is fully adopted across organisations and more agents are used and that sort of thing,” says Carolyn. “There is going to be more outcome-based pricing and those are not easy to do. But the channel is not there yet – most customers aren’t either – that’s going to take some time to roll out. Vendors will also have to change the way they downstream work with their channel partners. “For years, we’ve been predicting that the channel would move 100% into recurring revenue. That hasn’t happened. What we see across most channel companies is they run a hybrid business model where they have managed
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